


lay it on the line

by ShowMeAHero



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23106475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: “What’s your name?” the guy asks. After a beat, Eddie sighs internally, then turns to him.“Eddie,” he tells him. The guy offers him a hand. It takes Eddie a second to process why, but then he’s hastily setting his laptop down on their shared table and taking his hand to shake.“Just Eddie,” the guy replies. A statement, not a question. “Like Madonna? Or Jesus?”“Jesus has a full name, it’s Jesus Christ,” Eddie reminds him.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 39
Kudos: 497





	lay it on the line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeadAndDying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadAndDying/gifts).



> For [Norma](https://twitter.com/spagheddieman) who described what she wanted this to be as: "Eddie gargles with idiot juice, takes a shot of dumbass as breakfast, eats headassery for lunch, and goes no thot head empty for dinner."

Eddie’s reluctant enough to take the Chem lab required for his gen eds that he doesn’t do it for the first two years of undergrad, but he’s not enough of a procrastinator to wait until the literal last semester of senior year to do it. Instead, he just crams it right in the middle of his undergrad career, and enrolls himself in the first available Chem lab he finds that fits into his schedule during his junior year.

He doesn’t really know many people actually on his campus. He’s got acquaintances, but he doesn’t exactly… He’s not sure how to make  _ friends.  _ He’s bad at small talk, and he has a hard time connecting with other people. The school psychologist in the counseling center said he was repressed and encouraged him to see a therapist. Eddie had told him he’d get around to it before promptly never following up; he’s not sure what world that guy lives in where students in undergrad can afford to just  _ pay _ for therapists.

Because Eddie doesn’t really know that many people, though, he walks directly into the first day of his Chem lab and has truly no idea where to sit. He’d gotten a little lost on the way there, so he’s one of the last ones to show up, and there’s hardly any empty seats left. His eyes skim the room, white-knuckling the strap on his messenger bag.

“Hey!” a voice calls out. Eddie’s head snaps around to meet the eyes of a tall guy at a table halfway across the room. He waves at Eddie, then motions to the seat next to him. “Got a free spot for you.”

Eddie hesitates, for a brief moment, then goes. He debates the pros and cons of sitting with this guy and decides it’s worth it to sit near someone who actively seems to want to talk to him. When he takes the seat, the guy leans into him with a grin.

“What’s your name?” he asks. Eddie sets his bag down on the table and pulls his laptop out. After a beat, he sighs internally, then turns to the guy.

“Eddie,” he tells him. The guy offers him a hand. It takes Eddie a second to process why, but then he’s hastily setting his laptop down on their shared table and taking his hand to shake.

“Just Eddie,” the guy replies. A statement, not a question. “Like Madonna? Or Jesus?”

“Jesus  _ has  _ a full name, it’s Jesus Christ,” Eddie reminds him.

“So, you’re Eddie Christ,” the guy says. Eddie smiles for a brief moment before remembering himself. He releases the guy’s hand and goes back to unpacking his bag and setting up for class.

“Close,” Eddie says.

“How is that close?” the guy replies with a grin. Eddie has to hide his own smile, ducking his head to snap his laptop open with more force than strictly necessary.

“Phonetically,” Eddie replies. “My name is Eddie Kaspbrak.”

The guy just keeps smiling at him for a moment before he says, “Oh, right, you probably— Hold on, let me properly introduce myself.” He leans back so far in his stool that it tips backwards onto two legs, hovering for a moment as he stretches to reach the wall of lab coats hung up behind him. Somehow, he manages to snatch one without cracking his head open, tugging it on and grinning again at Eddie. “You can call me Dr. Tozier, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. His heart is pounding, just a little bit, because he feels like he knows what flirting is — or, at least, he has a good idea of what it’s  _ not,  _ and this isn’t  _ not  _ flirting,  _ maybe —  _ and this guy’s fun and friendly and not bad to look at. He’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, but he also wants to try. Maybe. It’s probably— It can’t be the  _ worst  _ idea, to reach out. Just a little bit.

“I find it hard to believe anyone in your family has a doctorate,” Eddie chooses to say instead. He’s not sure what possesses him to say this to a virtual  _ stranger,  _ but, lucky for him, the guy laughs.

“Actually, my dad’s a dentist,” the guy says. “So, he really is Dr. Tozier.”

“Dentists are just failed dental hygienists,” Eddie tells him. That just makes the guy laugh again, and Eddie can’t help but preen a little. The guy scoops up a pair of goggles off the table next to theirs and fights to tug them on over his huge prescription glasses. The sight is endearing and funny and— attractive, maybe?

Eddie takes a second to catalogue his emotions before deciding, yes, he is attracted to this guy. He’s big and tall, broad in the shoulders and long in the legs, with a messy half-up bun of black curls spilling out of a scrunchie and huge black glasses to match taking up half his stubbly, freckled face. When he grins, it lights up his whole expression. Eddie’s enticed.

“You’re totally right and I’m gonna tell my dad that the next time I see him,” the guy says. “My first name is Richie, though. You can just call me that.”

“Good to meet you, Richie,” Eddie tells him. Richie smiles, still struggling to yank the goggles into place over his thick glasses.

“You’ll take that back before the end of the week,” Richie says. Eddie beats back another smile.

“I’m counting on it,” he says.

He’s more snappish and jokey than he would normally be, throughout their class, but Richie is clearly  _ deeply  _ enjoying pushing his buttons. Richie meets him blow-for-blow, actually, so much so that Eddie’s feeling a little lightheaded by the time class actually ends.

“Same time Wednesday?” Richie asks, as they’re packing up their bags.

“Yeah, it’s a fucking Monday-Wednesday-Friday class, dumbass,” Eddie reminds him. “Unless you’re planning on flunking out in the next forty-eight hours.”

“You can never be too sure,” Richie tells him. He strips the goggles off his face and abandons them in a heap with his lab coat. “Until next time, Eddie Spaghetti. Same bat-time, same bat-channel, yeah?”

Eddie hesitates, then says, “Yeah,” feeling his own face go slightly warm as he carefully slips his laptop back into its sleeve in his bag. Richie claps him on the shoulder and takes off out the door to the lab, leaving Eddie slightly shell-shocked, still standing at their table, staring out the door like Richie had run through the wall and left a cartoonish man-shaped hole behind. He shakes himself before refocusing on packing up his belongings.

On Wednesday, Richie tugs the lab coat on again and insists that Eddie call him Dr. Tozier all class. Eddie gives him shit as his hands sweat and his heart pounds in his chest.

On Friday, they have to do a worksheet together. Richie finishes it in record time, then leans up and over Eddie’s shoulder to talk him through it, pointing out answers and explaining things patiently and with the same laughing lightheartedness he’d shown the first day.

Eddie never misses a day of his Chem lab and, shockingly, neither does Richie. Eddie says  _ shockingly,  _ because Richie’s mentioned a few times that he’s just not gone to classes he didn’t think he needed to attend, and that he’s slept through his 8am class on Thursdays multiple times. He’s never even late for their Chem lab, though. When Eddie gets there, every single time, three times a week, Richie’s already sitting at their table with a bag on Eddie’s seat to save it.

When the students in the class officially get partnered up a few weeks into the semester, Richie calls dibs on Eddie loudly and aggressively, and everybody turns to look at them. Eddie slumps down in his seat before punching Richie on the arm. Richie just throws his head back and fucking  _ laughs.  _ When he calms down, he starts brainstorming ideas for their joint final project in his little writing notebook.

Eddie realizes he’s  _ completely  _ fucked after, arguably, far too long. He  _ knows  _ he’s flirting, and he’s also about ninety-nine percent certain that he  _ knows  _ that Richie is flirting with him in return, but from there— He’s not entirely sure what to do. Richie laughs at his jokes and stares at his face when Eddie’s not looking and compliments him when he gets even the smallest question right, but maybe he’s just— Lonely, or something.

Richie knocks his shoulder into Eddie’s as he hands over a pair of goggles and a lab coat. “You actually need these today,” he says, and so Eddie takes them.

This time, not only does Richie insist that Eddie call him “Dr. Tozier,” but he insists upon referring to Eddie  _ exclusively  _ as “Dr. Kaspbrak,” which makes Eddie’s veins light up with electricity. When Richie leans gingerly over their tabletop, his curls of hair pulled up into a messy knot at the back of his head to keep them out of his eyes, Eddie can’t help but stare at the long line of his back through the coat. He traces the line up to Richie’s shoulders and across, down his arms to his bent elbows, his strong forearms, his wrists, his  _ hands. _

Eddie watches Richie wrap the long fingers of his left hand around one small jar while he grips an Erlenmeyer flask in his right. As he slowly,  _ slowly  _ pours the chemical from the jar into the flask, his tongue pokes out of his mouth, utterly focused on what he’s doing. Eddie can see the muscles pulling in his hands and arms as he struggles to keep steady. Sweat prickles along his hairline and he’s abruptly half-hard, on his way to fully hard. He exhales roughly.

“You okay?” Richie asks, eyes darting to the side to glance at Eddie before he refocuses back down on the chemicals spilling into the flask.

“Yeah, I just— I have to get— I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Eddie says, all in a rush, before shoving his stool backwards and hopping off. He ignores Richie saying his name to dash out of the room and down the hall. He finds the bathroom easy, slamming his way in and heading directly for the sinks.

Eddie throws the cold water on and ducks his head down. He’s about to splash his face when he hesitates. After a beat, he drops the water, washes his hands with soap, then cups his palms again to actually splash his face with cold,  _ clean  _ water, this time.

The shock to his system flushes out some of the heat and the anxiety and agitation of the situation are forcing his cock to calm down, but Eddie’s now stupidly,  _ painfully  _ aware of the fact that he really can’t ignore this anymore. It’s not just little jokes and cute comments and playful chest-swats anymore. It’s becoming Eddie splashing himself with cold water halfway through a Chem lab because he sees Richie’s tongue, and Eddie stopping himself from jerking off in his off-campus apartment at night to Richie’s face in his mind because it feels like crossing a line.

Eddie exhales slowly, then inhales. He does it again, then again, over and over until his heartbeat slows, then calms, until his face is less red in his reflection. He cups his hands again and just shoves his face into the puddled cold water, exhaling and blowing water into the sink as he does so, before he rallies and shuts the sink off.

Once he’s dried off and heading back into the Chem lab, he finds Richie with the stupid goggles pushed up into his hair, his glasses askew, his hair a mess, chemicals spilled all over their desk. Eddie stops mid-step, then sighs.

“At least they’re not toxic,” Richie says. “What’s your diagnosis, Dr. Kaspbrak?”

“My diagnosis, Dr. Tozier,” Eddie replies, “is that you’re such a fucking pissbrain that you’ll be lucky to even  _ pass  _ this lab.”

“That’s why I’ve got you,” Richie says, smiling all warm and happy again, and all the work Eddie put into calming down is for fucking  _ nothing,  _ because his heart is pounding and he’s half-hard again in seconds. He sighs and takes his seat again. “Something on your mind, Spaghetti Man?”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie tells him. He realizes too late that there’s not enough heat in it; Richie immediately looks suspicious. “Just thinking about our project.”

Richie laughs, his shoulders relaxing. “Oh, shit, dude, that’s it? Fuck, I thought I pissed you off or something— No, man, our project is gonna be  _ fine,  _ don’t worry about it. I got it all figured out.”

Eddie’s not sure what fucking possesses him, but he gathers up every ounce of courage he’s ever had and says, “We should exchange numbers, then. So we can work on our project together.”

The look Richie gives him not only suggests that he’s onto him, but also that he’s not entirely displeased with the direction Eddie has taken. Instead, Eddie gets a smile from Richie before he says, “If you wanted my number, baby, all you had to do was ask.”

“Shut up, I regret coming to this school,” Eddie says quickly. It’s better than saying,  _ “But I wasn’t ready then,”  _ so he allows it to come out of his mouth.

Richie does tug out his phone, though, and passes it over to Eddie so he can put his contact information in. Once it’s done, he takes the phone back, throwing an arm around Eddie and opening his front-facing camera.

“Smile,” Richie says, and Eddie does, on instinct. The picture Richie takes of the two of them is nice, but Eddie can’t figure out how to ask Richie to send it to him without seeming like a freak for it, so he just doesn’t say anything. Richie looks down at the picture before he says, “Alright, great,  _ perfect,”  _ and sets it as Eddie’s contact image.

“Text me and I’ll have your number,” Eddie says. Richie nods, going to open a message just as the professor called the class back together. Richie sets his phone aside, giving Eddie a sheepish one-sided grin.

It’s not until Eddie’s walking back to his off-campus apartment that his phone vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out to see that he’s received an image file from an unknown number. While he’s opening the messages, another text comes through.

_ excited to work more closely with you, dr. kaspbrak,  _ the text reads. Eddie’s whole body flushes with heat as he opens up the image file to see the selfie of the two of them from class earlier that day.

Eddie saves the image quickly and sets it as Richie’s contact photo when he saves his number in his phone. After a beat where Eddie’s not sure of the protocol, he texts back,  _ You mean under me, since we will never be peers, correct?,  _ and Richie replies with six laughing emojis, two hearts, and  _ fucking g-d willing i’ll be under you,  _ and then they’re off.

* * *

Eddie spends a lot of time thinking about Richie.

They text constantly. When they’re not in class together, they’re texting each other. They don’t even have separate conversations, at this point; their chat thread has just become one long discussion, talking about anything and everything, whatever comes into their heads. Richie rambles and tries to push Eddie’s buttons; Eddie fights back and tries to push Richie’s buttons in return. He may have asked for his phone number under the guise of their group project for Chem lab, but it seems like Richie enjoys texting Eddie as much as Eddie enjoys texting Richie.

Occasionally, Eddie panics. He gets concerned that Richie’s just humoring him, maybe, or that he doesn’t want some annoying, lonely hanger-on like Eddie bothering him all the time. Then, though, he goes back to their shared class and remembers that, while he thinks Richie is charming and annoying and endearing and funny and smart, Richie seems to think that  _ he’s  _ funny and smart and maybe even attractive in return, if Eddie’s reading his expressions correctly.

It takes Eddie a while to place the emotions he’s feeling, but, after a couple more weeks, he identifies the feeling as  _ want.  _ When he’s laying in bed on a Wednesday night, listening to the wind howl outside his apartment building, he realizes that being with Richie is the first thing that Eddie has ever truly let himself really  _ want  _ and pushed himself to actually  _ have. _

He’s never really known true want, because it was kept from him for so long. He tries not to think about his mother as much as possible, especially now that they’re no contact and she has no idea where he’s going to college, that he’s come out as gay (if coming out to himself and one friend in his freshman poetry class counts), or the path he’s planning to take in life.

It’s good, that Sonia’s not involved in his life, but that doesn’t mean she and everything she’s done to him don’t hang over him like a shadowy stormcloud at all times. Because of her, he grew up sheltered, barely ever leaving the house or exploring the world; because of her, he never had any friends, forced to make passing acquaintances during school hours that never lasted beyond that school year; because of her, Eddie feels like he never got the chance to properly  _ live,  _ or at least to  _ try.  _ While all of his peers were breaking their arms and skinning their knees and swimming in creeks, Eddie was hiding in his bedroom, avoiding his mother at all costs, dreaming of the day he’d finally get to leave.

Those feelings had been more than just  _ want.  _ The feelings Eddie had felt then were closer to  _ need;  _ he had felt a bone-deep, aching  _ need  _ to get out of his mother’s house. His mother told him what was acceptable to want and what was acceptable to have, and she slowly molded his perception of what he could and could not want or have, and, at some point, he believed she was telling the truth. He thought he couldn’t want, because he couldn’t have. He never wanted for anything, because there’s nothing to want when you don’t know what’s out there.

Sonia only ever gave Eddie what  _ she  _ approved of. He spent the first eighteen years of his life doing everything  _ she  _ wanted. He didn’t realize there was a difference between what she wanted and what he wanted, between her life and his; he didn’t realize his life was just beginning, that he could do anything he wanted,  _ anything,  _ and that his mother just wanted to stop that from happening.

Eddie knows now what it’s like to want, and to need, and to have. He knows how it feels to go after something and to obtain it; he’s gotten jobs, apartments, college acceptance letters, good grades, all of it. He’s gotten it all that way, but those are the things he knows he’s  _ supposed  _ to want. He  _ wants  _ the job, so he can make money and survive; he  _ wants  _ an apartment, so he can live. He wants good grades so he can graduate well, he wants acceptance letters so he can go to a good school, he wants to live a good life, he wants to live differently than his mother did.

Eddie has never wanted  _ anything  _ quite like he wants Richie. Nobody has ever been quite like Richie, though. He’s tactile, and warm, and friendly, and  _ fun.  _ He’s messy and scattered; he procrastinates and he’s too smart for his own good; he has a poor work ethic when he’s bored and a stellar one when he’s engaged. There’s absolutely nobody and nothing here to tell him that he shouldn’t want Richie; there’s no reason that he can’t be allowed to at least pursue him. There’s nobody to tell him he doesn’t want him, that he doesn’t know  _ what  _ he wants.

For once, Eddie is completely certain about something. He wants Richie. He’s not entirely sure what to do about it, but he wants him, and he wants to start finding out how to express that. It’s all so fresh and new, he doesn’t want to fuck it up, but he’s just so overwhelmed with emotion— He needs to do  _ something. _

Eddie’s embraced who he is, as best as he can at this point in his life. He doesn’t hate the person he sees in the mirror. Some days, he even whistles through his morning routine. Things are as good as they’re gonna get, right now, until he makes another big change. The more he finds himself growing addicted to the feeling he gets around Richie, the more willing he becomes to make that big change.

Things are good, but Eddie knows they can get better. He knows Richie makes him smile and makes the weight on his shoulders seem lighter just by being around him. He knows that being around Richie’s energy always just  _ instantly  _ improves Eddie’s energy, too, even if he’s in the  _ worst  _ mood, got zero sleep, had a horrible shift at work, forgot an assignment, is just plain  _ angry—  _ No matter what. No matter  _ what,  _ Richie makes things better.

Eddie gears up for about a full week to ask Richie out. They text a lot, and they hang out three times a week in class. Sometimes, they’ll even go to the little lounge in the university building their class is in and hang out for a while longer, after Chem lab ends, getting a head start on work or just shooting the shit before one of them has to leave for another class or work or a meeting.

They’ve known each other for months and have been openly flirting with each other for weeks when, one freezing-cold Friday in class, Richie shoves his goggles up off his face into his hair and says, “Hey, do you wanna come over to my place tomorrow?”

Eddie’s blood runs cold for the briefest of moments before it flashes hot and starts pounding through his veins. He forces his heart back out of his throat and into his chest before he looks over to Richie. He feels like Richie must be able to see the panic in his face, can see his pulse racing through his skin, and so he looks away again.

“I just know you don’t have anything usually after Fridays,” Richie says. “Or— On Saturdays. I mean. And, plus, y’know, we have that exam next Wednesday, so I figured we should probably… help each other study.”

Eddie’s not sure if  _ “help each other study”  _ really means helping each other study, or if Richie has some ulterior motive, like Eddie does. There’s a part of him that wonders if this is some sort of code that all young single people know, that he missed out on because he didn’t date in middle school and high school like a normal American teenager. He feels, terrifyingly, fleetingly,  _ completely  _ out of his depth.

“Only if that’s okay,” Richie says in a rush. “Sorry, I didn’t mean— I shouldn’t have asked like that.”

The fact that  _ Richie’s  _ concerned only cements the fact, for Eddie, that he really,  _ truly  _ wants him. Eddie can’t help but grin as he pulls out his phone and makes a show of checking his calendar and his schedule for the night.

“I guess I can,” he says. Richie beams at him, all unabashed joy and crinkles near his eyes. Eddie’s heart keeps pounding, the words  _ is this a date  _ racing through his mind on a loop.

The professor dismisses them, then, before they can say anything more. Richie has to run right out of class on Fridays to get to his shift at the bar he works at on time, so he bids Eddie a quick farewell and a delighted, “See you tomorrow, then!”

“See you,” Eddie says, as Richie rushes out the door. Eddie stares down at his phone’s open calendar before he taps tomorrow’s little box and types in an event that just says  _ RICHIE. _

* * *

Eddie barely sleeps, he’s so anxious and full of nervous, excited energy, buzzing through his limbs and keeping his brain awake and his eyes snapped wide open. He has to force himself not to overthink what to wear. Instead, he just grabs a sweater he knows Richie’s eyes have lingered on, jeans he knows are slightly too tight, and doesn’t let himself look too long in the mirror before he leaves.

He’s probably more excited about this than he’s ever been about  _ anything.  _ Theoretically, this  _ could  _ turn into a date, and so he spends most of his bus ride to Richie’s place psyching himself up for that possibility. It might even  _ already  _ be a date, in which case Eddie will need to ask for clarification. And if it’s  _ not  _ a date, Eddie’s already decided that he  _ will  _ ask Richie out on an  _ actual  _ date if the day goes well.

Regardless, Eddie’s heart is pounding and he knows he has a stupid smile on his face, but he lets it stay there when he makes his way up the stairs of Richie’s building and knocks on his apartment door. He’s still smiling, happy and excited and waiting for Richie to come let him in, when the door opens.

The problem is, Richie isn’t the one opening the door. Instead, it’s a yawning, sleep-mussed woman rubbing at her face with one hand and leaning against the door with the other, fingers wrapped around the knob. She shoves a messy tangle of red hair out of her eyes and looks Eddie over. All she’s got on is an oversized sleep shirt with some stick-figures campers around tents and a fire that says  _ THIS SUMMER WILL BE IN-TENTS!  _ across the top and  _ Lake Evangeline Summer Camp 2008  _ at the bottom. It’s clearly a men’s shirt, and clearly not hers. Eddie’s blood runs cold.

Whoever she is, she half-smiles when she sees Eddie before she turns to shout back over her shoulder, “Richie, babe, Eddie’s here to see you!”

At those words, Eddie’s heart just fucking  _ plummets  _ into the pit of his stomach. He has no fucking idea how he’s misread his situation with Richie  _ this  _ badly, that he showed up one-hundred-percent certain that he was going on a date just for Richie’s fucking  _ girlfriend  _ to open the door. The one person— The  _ one person—  _ that Eddie was starting to fall for, and he fucking misread the  _ entire  _ thing. He feels like such a fucking idiot. Of  _ course  _ Richie is funny, and smart, and goofy, and hot, and kind, and quick, and  _ fucking straight.  _ Of  _ course  _ he is.

Richie comes barrelling around the corner and nearly falls over, sliding in his socks like a puppy running on hardwood floors, but he gets his legs back under him and catches himself on the wall. Eddie is both hopelessly gone over him and helplessly heartbroken over already losing him.  _ At least the girl’s pretty,  _ he thinks bitterly, because if Richie doesn’t want to be with  _ him,  _ at least Eddie can feel like there’s a good enough reason for it.

“Come on in, Eds, the water’s fine,” Richie says, grasping Eddie by the wrist. He tugs Eddie past the girl and starts to drag him down the hall before the girl laughs.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asks. Eddie silently begs Richie not to stop, but Richie, apparently, can’t hear his thoughts, because he comes to a screeching halt and spins Eddie around by the shoulders.

“Eddie, this is Beverly Marsh, light of my life and eater of all my cereal,” Richie says. Eddie wants to fucking  _ cry.  _ “Bev, this is Eddie Kaspbrak, he’s the smartest guy in the whole world and he’s the reason I’m still in school.”

“Thank God for you,” Bev says to Eddie. He can’t say likewise, so he just forces a smile and a nod before looking away. Based on the beat of silence, it doesn’t quite land. Lucky for them, though, Richie is Richie, and he grabs Eddie by the arms and whirls him again, all but frog-marching him down the hallway and into a doorway chosen seemingly at random.

Richie flings the door open and steps aside, letting Eddie step into the doorway. “Mi casa es su casa,” he says, sweeping his arm towards the inside of the room. Eddie takes another hesitant step in, craning his neck to look around the door at the rest of the room before he goes fully inside. Richie just laughs at him, says, “Nothing’s hiding to bite you,” and shoves him by the shoulder the rest of the way in.

In Richie’s cluttered room, things feel more like they do in Chem lab. They feel better, actually, because there’s no students getting their attention, no professor lecturing at them, no assignments that need finishing. Richie pulls a beat-up armchair over to his secondhand desk and lets Eddie take it. He sprawls himself out in his desk chair, sock feet crossed under himself as he drops his Chemistry textbook open on the desktop and sighs. He’s got pink sweatpants on and a thin white tank top that says  _ Silver Springs deserved to be on Rumors  _ on the upper left breast. Just looking at him makes Eddie want to nuzzle into him, to hug him and be held by him and never leave.

Richie flirts, the entire time they’re studying. The  _ entire  _ time. Just like he always does. And, of course, Eddie can’t back down  _ now,  _ so he flirts back, gives just as good as he gets. When Richie’s fingers brush the thin skin inside Eddie’s wrist, Eddie turns his hand and catches Richie’s pinky, hooking him just for a second. When Richie shakes his hair loose and then ties it back up out of the way, Eddie ruffles his own hair and pushes it back form his eyes, just to see Richie’s eyes follow the motion.

The entire time, though, Eddie can’t stop thinking about Beverly. Bev, Richie’s girlfriend, hot and feminine, with long smooth legs and beautiful red hair. Fucking  _ Bev,  _ who answers the door wearing nothing but her boyfriend’s stupid old camp t-shirt, even though she has no idea who’s on the other side. Goddamn fucking  _ Beverly Marsh,  _ who gets to date Richie Tozier when Eddie would give his left fucking arm for the privilege on a good day.

By the end of the study date — study meeting, whatever, Eddie can’t let himself think the word  _ date  _ that close to Richie, not anymore — Eddie’s convinced. He knows better now. Richie is flirtatiously friendly; he doesn’t mean what he’s saying, it’s just that Eddie overthought everything and read too much into it and now he’s got a dumb crush. This is just how Richie is, but that’s not  _ his  _ fault. Eddie can’t really see himself just  _ not  _ hanging out with Richie over this; even if he can never be  _ with  _ him, he still loves spending time with him. Their time studying is the most fun he’s had in— in years, actually. It’s possible it’s the most fun he’s had  _ ever,  _ which says so much about both him and Richie.

When the sun starts to dip and it starts getting close to the time Richie needs to begin getting ready for his shift that night, Eddie’s decided he’s not going to say anything. There’s no point, and it’s not worth it, to risk losing Richie over something that stupid. He’s never wanted or needed anyone so badly before; he certainly can shove this back and do that all again.

He doesn’t want to, not now that he’s gotten a taste of the good shit, the way life  _ could  _ be, but he’s resigned himself to the fact that he  _ has  _ to.

* * *

A week and a half later, Eddie meets Ben Hanscom.

Eddie should’ve known better, he figures. Since he first went over Richie’s place that Saturday, he’s gone over almost every night, at least for a couple of hours, under the guise of studying. Usually, though, they’ll just hang out and watch movies or television shows. Sometimes they’ll drink beers that Eddie brings as they just lounge on Richie’s messy bed and shoot the shit. It’s awesome. More than that, it’s  _ perfect,  _ and if Eddie didn’t know Richie was straight with a girlfriend, he would’ve made a move a long time ago, he thinks.

The thing is, he’s learned in that week and a half that Richie has a habit of leaving the front door to his apartment unlocked when he knows somebody is coming over. Eddie had chastised him endlessly about this when he first found out, but Richie had just responded, “Work smarter, not harder.” When someone knocks on the door when RIchie’s home by himself, he’ll just shout, “Come in!” or “It’s unlocked!”

He gets distracted easy, he tells him. When Eddie asks if there was a specific incident that prompted this, Richie says, “Well, one time Bev came over when my hands were covered in cookie dough, so—”

“I’m sorry I asked,” Eddie cuts him off, before he can hear the end of the story. He  _ is  _ sorry he asked; he doesn’t like hearing about Bev. Only for normal reasons; it has nothing to do with the fact that thinking about her and Richie together makes him want to claw his own stomach out with his nails.

That means, though, that when Eddie comes over Richie’s place after his post-Chem-lab shift on Wednesday, he finds Richie sitting in some guy’s lap. He’s got his head on his shoulder as they watch some movie; Bev is sitting next to them on the sofa, her feet kicked up across the strange guy’s knees, behind Richie where he’s curled up in his lap. It makes a flash of flaming-hot envy scream through his veins, followed by a foggy resentment and a distant confusion.

Eddie just stands in the doorway, frozen, hand on the front door knob. The guy must’ve heard the  _ click,  _ though, because he turns to look at him, even though Eddie hasn’t so much as spoken a word or exhaled a breath.

“Hey, you must be Eddie,” the guy says warmly. He grins, and Richie’s head shoots up off his shoulder before he scrambles off the guy and to his feet. Eddie can’t help but smile as Richie falls into a pile of limbs on the floor before jumping up again.

“Eds, you’re early,” Richie says hurriedly. Eddie’s angry, and sad, and heartbroken, but he forcefully reminds himself  _ it’s not Richie’s fault, he’s happy and he’s dating and it’s not his fault you have this stupid crush on him. _

“Not really,” Eddie says. He shuts the door behind himself and motions to the clock underneath the television mounted on Richie’s living room wall. “My shift ended about a half-hour ago, I walked here about as fast as I ever do.”

“Oh,” Richie says. They’re all quiet for a moment, the only sound the voices on the television. Then, Richie says, “Well— I— I lost track of time, I guess, I’m sorry about that.”

“No worries,” Eddie tells him. His whole fucking chest  _ hurts. _

“Well, join us, buddy,” Richie says. He pats the spot beside Bev before climbing right back into the guy’s lap. After a second, he startles, then says, “Oh, Eds, I’m sorry, this is Ben Hanscom. The light of Bev’s life, though she’s the light of mine. The tangled webs we weave.”

Eddie can’t help but huff a laugh, but it’s dry. He can’t help but feel humorless, right now. Hopeless. “Hey, Ben. I’m Eddie.”

“Good to meet you, since I’ve heard so much about you,” Ben says. Eddie offers him a hand; Ben shakes it over the back of the sofa, contorted to reach him around Richie’s body pinning him in place. “I feel like I know you already.”

“All bad stuff,” Richie assures him. Eddie drops his coat and his bag by the door with his shoes, where Richie always throws them, before he joins them on the sofa. They’re four full-grown adults crammed onto one couch, but Richie is in Ben’s lap and Bev’s draped across him as she leans her head on Eddie’s shoulder, so they fit, nice and tight.

Eddie doesn’t watch the movie. He couldn’t even say what movie it  _ was  _ if someone held a gun to his head. Instead, he spends the entire time watching Richie and Ben in his peripheral vision. He feels weird, at first, watching Richie drape himself all over someone who isn’t Bev. His girlfriend is  _ right there,  _ and he’s  _ obviously  _ flirting with Ben, who is  _ obviously  _ hot in such an  _ obvious  _ sort of way that even Eddie, who spends most nights seething in jealousy over Bev’s mere existence, feels bad for her as he watches this.

After a while, Richie shifts, going to lean into Bev instead. With a grin, she shoves him off and back onto Ben. Eddie can’t tell if it’s pointed or not, if she’s angry or not, if she’s upset or not; he can’t tell if Richie’s doing the wrong thing or something normal.

Then, though, Bev goes to get up, and she stoops over to kiss Richie on the cheek, then Ben on the mouth, and Eddie’s whole brain stops.

He can’t process what he’s seeing. He knows— He  _ knows  _ there are people who are in relationships with more than one person. He knows polyamory is a thing. He’s never considered it, but he knows it exists, as a concept. He didn’t know Richie was dating two people, but if one of them— Well, one of them is a guy. A hot guy. A very masculine, attractive man, whose lap Richie has been occupying for over an hour, at least, and probably longer, long before Eddie got here.

In theory, this means Eddie has a chance. In practice, it means that there are currently  _ two people  _ dating Richie, and that thought alone makes Eddie’s brain start to melt and drip down his spine. He’s so upset so suddenly that his hands feel numb. Two fun, hot, interesting people are dating Richie, and Eddie’s just the partner in Richie’s stupid Chem lab who keeps showing up at his house.

“I have to go,” Eddie says abruptly, standing from the sofa and grabbing his phone off the coffee table. Bev pauses in the doorway to the living room, bowl of microwave popcorn in hand, brow furrowed; Ben and Richie both look confused, too, when he glances to them. He can’t let them stop him, so he just quickly speed-walks around the couch to snatch his things up by the door.

“Everything okay?” Richie asks. Eddie shoves his feet into his shoes hastily, tugging his jacket on with one arm at the same time.

“Yup, sorry, I just— I just remembered something I have to do at home, I’ve got a paper,” Eddie lies, all in a rush. He throws the strap of his bag up over one shoulder, shoving his other arm through the second empty sleeve. “I gotta head home, sorry. I’ll see you Friday.”

“Bye,” Richie says, sounding slightly confused. Eddie barely hears it as he whirls out the door into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind himself. He leans up against the wall, catching his breath for a brief moment. He feels fucking  _ stupid,  _ he feels  _ stupid. _

Once he’s got it together enough to travel back to his building, he makes himself go. He leaves Richie’s apartment behind and he goes. On the walk, he resolves to fucking  _ move on,  _ to stop fucking mooning over Richie, who is  _ dating two people,  _ and to get a fucking grip.

By the time he’s back in his apartment, he’s completely decided. He’s resolved to learn how to fucking act around Richie. And his girlfriend. And his boyfriend. Even if the jealousy is clawing his insides to shreds; he just can’t stop being friends with Richie. He can’t.

So, he doesn’t.

* * *

Just a week later, this time, Eddie meets Bill Denbrough.

Eddie’s just left his Photonics lab, so his brain is pretty much mush at this point. He’d seen Ben and Bev getting dinner together in a place off-campus on his walk over, so he  _ knows  _ they’re not in Richie’s apartment. In theory, the place should be completely empty. Then, the two of them can lounge on Richie’s bed like they like to do, and drink the beers Eddie picked up on the walk, and watch one of the horror movies Eddie keeps recommending that Richie hasn’t seen yet.

When Eddie gets to Richie’s building, there’s an unfamiliar bicycle on the rack outside. Eddie looks at it with a sinking feeling. There’s plenty of apartments in the building, but, for some reason, he’s just getting this stupid,  _ horrible  _ feeling that whoever this is, is up in Richie’s apartment.

He’s right. When Eddie opens Richie’s front door, he’s not alone. It’s not Bev or Ben, though; they didn’t sprint ahead of him and make it to Richie’s place that fast just to maliciously make him envy them and their relationship with Richie. It’s a guy who comes up even shorter than Eddie at his full height, burying his face in Richie’s chest. That’s not even the worst fucking  _ part,  _ though.

The worst part is Richie. Not only is this strange man pressed all up against Richie, but Eddie opens Richie’s door  _ just  _ as Richie’s wrapping his arms around the guy. He twines them right around his middle, his movements slow and smooth as his hands glide over his chest and then down, his fingers interlocking over his belly. He nuzzles into the guy’s soft hair, dragging his nose along his head until he sighs near his ear.

“Won’t you just stay?” Eddie hears Richie say softly. “Just stay and—”

“No,  _ no,”  _ the guy insists. “It’ll be weird if we’re both here, Rich. Quit being a freak.”

Richie makes a quiet, mournful noise. It makes Eddie’s heart fucking sink. He hates it; he wants to fix everything, but he  _ can’t,  _ because the guy is right. It’s weird if they’re both there. It’s weird, this whole thing is  _ weird. _

As if it’s not bad enough that Eddie had started falling in love with his stupid straight Chem lab partner. As if it’s not bad  _ enough  _ that said lab partner has a stupid hot girlfriend  _ and  _ a stupid hot boyfriend, but apparently he’s got  _ multiple  _ stupid hot boyfriends, and yet Eddie somehow doesn’t even fucking register as a blip on his  _ radar. _

Abruptly, Eddie’s stomach twists, and he’s  _ livid.  _ He’s so fucking  _ angry  _ looking at this, but there’s nobody to be angry  _ at.  _ This is just Richie’s life, and Eddie wishes it was different for— for his own stupid reasons,  _ selfish  _ reasons, but it’s  _ hard.  _ It’s fucking  _ hard  _ to want somebody, to really  _ want  _ somebody for the first time in your  _ life,  _ and to have it constantly rubbed in his face that that person isn’t interested in him in the  _ least—  _ He’s fucking miserable.

“I should— I’m sorry,” Eddie manages to get out. His hands are  _ shaking.  _ He wants to leave so fucking badly.

The guy and Richie both jump, at the sound of his voice. Richie lets the guy go, but he drapes an arm across his shoulders and dangling down off the other side. He rubs his thumb in a circle over the guy’s shoulder, through his sweater. Eddie wants to throw up.

“Hey, what’s wrong, bud?” Richie asks. “I was just asking Bill here if he’d stay around a little bit longer, he was planning to leave but I don’t want him to go yet.” Richie gives Eddie a pouting face, one that usually works when he wants first dibs on something or he wants to copy Eddie’s answers off his homework, but Eddie can’t let it work right now.

“You don’t have to go,” Eddie tells the guy— Bill, apparently. He adjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder and says, “I’m just gonna go—”

“No, no, neither of you have to leave,” Richie assures him. “We can have fun together, right— Right, Bill? I think you two would really like each other.”

Panic jumps up into Eddie’s throat. Bill’s face goes red, and he starts to stammer out some response, but he looks so fucking embarrassed and flustered, Eddie wants to die  _ for  _ him. After a beat, Bill twists and shoves at Richie. The move is fond and familiar, and they both laugh.

“Sorry, I’m gonna go,” Eddie says again. Richie and Bill both start to protest, this time, but then Eddie’s slamming the door shut and running down the hall.

He can’t keep doing this. This can’t keep fucking happening, because if it does, Richie won’t want to even  _ see  _ him anymore. He can’t act weird around Richie’s partners, and he can’t keep running away from his apartment. He needs to just be a good, solid,  _ supportive  _ friend. It’s what Richie deserves. It’s what  _ normal  _ people do.

Eddie runs all the way home. He ran varsity track in high school, and he’s the primary distance runner for their university’s men’s track and field team; he makes it back to his apartment in no time at all. He abandons his bag by the door, kicks his shoes off and forcefully shoves them into a line at the foot of his bed, and then he flops face-down on his mattress. It feels excessively juvenile, but he never really  _ got  _ to do this when he actually  _ was  _ a teenager, so he feels he’s earned it, this once.

* * *

A few days later, Eddie meets Stan Uris.

Well, he doesn’t _meet_ Stan until about two days later. A more accurate statement on this day would be, _A_ _few days later, Eddie sees Stan Uris for the first time,_ because they are neither introduced, nor do they make eye contact. Eddie doesn’t even step foot in Richie’s apartment, this time. He’s just come to the building and jogged up the stairs; it’s been _minutes_ since he crossed the threshold into the lobby, _minutes,_ but no amount of time could truly have prepared him for what he saw when he came out of the stairwell and into the fourth-floor hallway.

Richie’s front door is open, and he’s leaning in the empty doorway, shoulder propping him up against the jamb. He’s laughing at something an unfamiliar man is saying to him. The guy has his arms folded across his chest, and he’s  _ not  _ laughing, but he is smiling. He’s handsome, too, all clean edges and trim lines, sandy hair spilling into his face.

As Eddie watches, frozen at the end of the hallway, the guy turns to leave. Richie catches him by the wrist and ducks his head to kiss him, but the guy turns his face away. Eddie’s stomach clenches, fear and hope warring inside of him. Richie smiles a little, says something quietly to the guy; the guy rolls his eyes in response, but he turns back to Richie with a smile.

It’s like a car accident. It is fully like Eddie is watching a car accident happen in slow motion, powerless to do anything to stop it and prevent casualties. The guy leans up, and Richie leans down, and they kiss.

They fucking  _ kiss.  _ On the  _ lips. _

They’re not holding hands. They’re not sitting in each other’s laps. They’re not whispering sweet nothings. They’re fucking  _ kissing. _

The backs of Eddie’s eyes burn, and he turns without thinking, sprinting back down the stairs. The door shuts softly behind him; hopefully, Richie will never even know he was there.

The kiss plays on a loop in Eddie’s mind’s eye for  _ days.  _ He can hardly focus on anything else, thinking about Richie kissing some guy like that. Some guy who isn’t Eddie, some guy who isn’t— He’s not even one of the ones Eddie  _ knows.  _ Fucking  _ shit. _

* * *

It’s only two days after that that Eddie meets Mike Hanlon.

He spends the first day mourning and feeling bad for himself. Briefly, he contemplates skipping classes or calling out of work, but he can’t convince himself to do it. Instead, he drags himself to his Tuesday classes and his Tuesday shift and then back onto his Tuesday fucking  _ bus.  _ The whole time, he keeps thinking about Richie.

He can’t stop thinking about Richie kissing that guy. It’s  _ deeply  _ vexing him, eating away at his lungs with each passing minute that the images fill his brain. The footage of the memory just keeps playing, looping over and over, making Eddie fucking miserable. On the bus ride, he decides he’s going to be proactive, he’s going to  _ solve  _ this problem.

He gets off at Richie’s stop instead of his own. He marches right into the building and up the stairs, opens Richie’s front door without knocking, and finds— No Richie.

Instead, on the sofa, the guy from the other day is sitting with Bill, watching a movie. Eddie can hear someone banging around in the other room. He assumes it’s Richie and shuts the door behind himself, moving to head down the hall and go to him, but Bill and the guy both turn to look at him at the sound.

“Oh, hey, Eddie!” Bill exclaims. He pauses the show they’re watching. “Have you guys met already?”

“No,” the guy says, as Eddie silently seethes. The guy gets up and dusts himself off before offering Eddie a hand. “It’s good to finally meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“The famous Eddie,” Bill comments, eating a handful of M&Ms from a bag on the coffee table.

“Richie never shuts up about you,” the guy says. “He’s always talking about that fucking Chem class you guys are taking.”

“Oh, right, yeah,” Eddie says, like that makes  _ any  _ fucking sense. Richie’s a weird guy; it makes sense he’d talk about weird things, like the Chem lab where he’s partnered up with the freak that won’t stop coming over to his apartment and staring angrily at his partners. “Yeah, that’s me, I suppose, I’m Eddie.”

“Well, I’m Stanley Uris, Eddie,” he says.

“Good to meet you,” Eddie says, before blowing past them all to go down the hallway to Richie’s bedroom, politeness be damned. The bedroom door is open, and there’s a man inside, but that man isn’t Richie. Of  _ fucking  _ course, it’s  _ another  _ handsome guy standing  _ shirtless  _ in the middle of  _ Richie’s fucking bedroom. _

The guy’s digging through a drawer in Richie’s dresser. He comes up with a novelty t-shirt, one that says  _ Novelty T-Shirt!  _ across it in faded white text; he looks it over for a second before tugging it on over his head. It’s Richie’s shirt, and Eddie  _ knows  _ it’s Richie’s shirt, because he recognizes it. Richie wore it the week before, paired under a soft, cozy-looking red sweater, and all Eddie had wanted in that moment was to fucking— to  _ touch  _ him, to reach out and run his hands all over him and just  _ feel. _

The point is, he knows it’s Richie’s shirt. He stared at it fucking long enough.

And  _ this fucking guy,  _ this  _ stranger,  _ is  _ putting it on. _

After standing shirtless.

In Richie’s room.

“Oh, hey,” the guy says. “Are you Eddie? I’m Mike, I’ve heard—”

“A lot about me,” Eddie finishes for him. “I figured. I was looking for Richie, but he’s—”

“He picked up an extra shift,” Mike says. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“I wasn’t supposed to,” Eddie says, then stops. “I’m— I’m gonna go.”

“Are you sure? Because—” Mike starts to say, but Eddie’s already turned and walked away. He strides right through the living room and has his hand on the door knob, ready to turn it, when Bill pauses the television again.

“Heading out already?” Stan asks. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“I’m sure Richie wants you to stay,” Bill adds. Eddie shakes his head, twisting the door knob.

“I just remembered I have a paper, so if he’s not here to help study I should just go back to my place,” Eddie says, so quickly nobody can interject. Bill has barely said goodbye when Eddie’s stepping into the hall and closing the door behind him, chest heaving.

At this point, it just fucking  _ tracks.  _ He’s only, like— met each of them once or twice, but,  _ fuck,  _ he can tell they’re all together. There’s no  _ way  _ Richie isn’t dating  _ all  _ of them, not with the way he acts around them, or the way they all act around each  _ other.  _ The soft look on Richie’s face when he’d been murmuring softly to Bill, and the way Mike pulled on Richie’s clothes like it was second nature, and— and  _ all of it,  _ the way Richie had looked kissing Stan, it’s driving Eddie out of his  _ mind. _

Richie so clearly loves each and every one of his partners, and clearly has no space for Eddie, because, if he did,  _ surely  _ he would’ve said something by now. He obviously is okay with multiple partners, so what is it about Eddie that makes him stay away?

The sadness building up in Eddie’s chest abruptly shifts to anger, then to jealousy, so fast he nearly gets emotional whiplash. He leaves the hallway, shoving away from the wall and storming down the stairs, skipping steps in his haste to get out. At a near-sprint, he takes off down the street and just starts to  _ run. _

All he can think about is Richie. His entire mind is clouded with the fact that he’s definitely falling more and more in love with Richie fucking Tozier every goddamn day, and there’s not a thing he can do about it. He  _ knows  _ he can’t have Richie, but he also  _ knows  _ how desperately he wants him, how much he fucking  _ loves  _ him, how deeply he knows he can’t love anyone else like this, in spite of himself. He’s so fucking wrapped up in his brain, cycling through every  _ moment  _ between the six of them.

He remembers Ben and Beverly’s little kiss, the way they shared a secret, small moment together, and it  _ haunts  _ him. Richie was in between them, and they were probably— He’s not sure, exactly, but they were probably thinking about Richie, or something. And— And Mike and Bill, today, when Mike had followed Eddie into the living room, Eddie had  _ seen him  _ take Bill’s hand. So, they’re all dating Richie, but they’re also all dating each  _ other. _

Eddie slows to a walk, then stops on the sidewalk, chest heaving. He frowns. After a beat, he remembers Richie talking about Stan’s really good friend, some girl named Patty that he was interested in. Richie kept complaining about how much time Stan is spending with her, but how he’s not letting anyone meet her yet. Eddie wonders if they’re bringing  _ her  _ in, if she’s on some trial run and, if they all approve, she gets to be a part of it.

Eddie looks back over his shoulder. After a moment, he looks forward again, in the direction of his apartment building. With a sigh, he pulls out his phone and shoots off a text to Richie as he starts trudging back.

_ I need to talk to you,  _ Eddie sends.  _ I’m on my way to your place. _

**i’ll be there in ten minutes,** Richie replies quickly, and so Eddie takes his time on the walk back. He accidentally times it perfectly, actually, because he’s taking the last steps up to the building just as Richie comes around the corner and calls out, “Hey, Eds!”

Eddie whirls, on the third step down from the door into the lobby. Richie stops, at the foot of the stairs, and so Eddie backtracks to stand one step above him, keeping their eyes level. Richie grins at him like he knows exactly what he’s doing, which— He probably does know. He knows Eddie pretty well by now.

“What’s up, buttercup?” Richie asks, when Eddie spends an extended moment staring into his eyes, trying to figure out what he wants to say. He doesn’t know how to ask,  _ Why are you dating five people and can I try it if it means I can date you?,  _ so he just keeps staring, for a moment. Richie laughs, and he almost sounds nervous.  _ Fuck.  _ He probably already knows what Eddie’s thinking, what he knows, and he’s—

“I’m sorry,” Eddie blurts out. Richie furrows his brow. “I was just— I was upstairs with Stan and Bill and Mike, and I— I didn’t mean—”

“Did they say something?” Richie asks. He groans, then backs up a step, linking his fingers behind his head as he says, “Those  _ motherfuckers,  _ I  _ told  _ them not to say anything—”

“No, they didn’t say anything,” Eddie says. He’s starting to feel confused, too, because if there’s something for them to say, then that means Richie’s been saying  _ something,  _ which is more than the near  _ nothing  _ Eddie thought Richie thought of him.

“They didn’t?” Richie asks. “Then, why—”

“I figured it out on my own,” Eddie says.

“And ran away,” Richie adds.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “But I came back.”

“You did come back,” Richie says. “Why’d you come back, Eds?”

Eddie hesitates. He’s not sure why. Well, actually, that’s not true— He came back because of Richie, but he’s not sure if that qualifies as an answer. His eyes, just for a moment, flicker down to Richie’s mouth. When he looks back up to meet his eyes again, Richie’s smiling.

“Aha,” he says. “You’re not so mysterious after all, are you?”

Eddie’s about to ask what the  _ fuck  _ Richie means by that when his mouth is suddenly occupied, because Richie is ducking his head down and kissing Eddie. Directly on the  _ mouth,  _ the way he kissed  _ Stan,  _ and the joy Eddie feels over Richie kissing him is immediately overruled by how horrible the memory of Richie kissing Stan just a few days ago makes him feel.

Eddie jerks backwards, stumbling on the step and nearly falling back onto his ass. Richie catches him by the wrist, hauling him upright again; the two of them just stare at each other for a long, silent moment.

“I— I don’t think this is a good idea,” Eddie says. Richie’s whole face crumples, and Eddie’s heart  _ breaks.  _ “No, I— I just— I don’t really know if this— I don’t—” Eddie exhales, then scrubs at his face hard with his hands before he says, “I have to— I, I have— I have to—”

Richie looks like he’s maybe about to interject, or possibly burst into tears, which is confusing and upsetting and so disorienting that Eddie can only pull his wrist free and leave again. Every step he takes away from Richie is like a physical fucking wound in his chest, but he forces himself to do it, because he has no idea what he’s feeling or what the  _ fuck  _ is going on, and he’s starting to  _ truly  _ freak out about it.

Eddie makes it all the way home before he starts to actually panic. He doesn’t let himself get his old, useless inhaler out of his desk drawer; instead, he reminds himself it’s just a crush, grabs his laptop, and sets himself up on his bed with it.

* * *

For the next thirteen hours, Eddie Kaspbrak researches everything the Internet has to offer him about polyamory, polyromance, poly relationships, the whole nine yards. He carefully and meticulously researches each and every aspect of it that he can, just so he can understand it better. He wants to understand Richie better, he wants to  _ understand  _ this.

After those thirteen hours, Eddie then spends the next five hours alternating between ten-minute power naps and deep, genuine thinking about whether or not he could be in this relationship for Richie. He loves him so— just, so  _ fucking _ much. He’s  _ in  _ love with him; that’s one thing he knows for certain, after all the organizers and pros/cons lists and charts and graphs and diary entries he’s made about this. He’s absolutely in love with him, and he still doesn’t think he can do this.

He wishes so fucking  _ badly  _ that he could be the sort of person willing to try, but he’s not. He’s too— He knows himself. He  _ knows  _ himself, and he knows how bitter he can get, how envious and jealous he’s been just watching Richie be with his partners, who have known him  _ far  _ longer than Eddie and must know him  _ far  _ better, and yet Eddie wants Richie all to himself, at all times. He can’t be in a healthy poly relationship, as badly as he wants to be with Richie.

Eddie cleans up and organizes all his research and work, takes it to his trash can, and dumps it in. He drags the trash can over to his window and props it open with a block of wood so the smoke goes outside when he lights all the papers on fire. While the fire burns, he cleans out his browser history and restarts his computer. After it’s all finished, he feels both cleansed and sad. Together, they form  _ resigned,  _ an emotion that weighs heavily on Eddie’s shoulders and, presumably, will until the day he dies.

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, by the time he’s done, and he decides he needs to talk to Richie. He knows he can’t be forced to share him in a relationship, but that doesn’t mean he can’t ask Richie if they can still be friends. He still loves Richie, but, even more, he likes Richie,  _ likes  _ him, and all the others, and and the others love Richie, and he loves them, and that’s  _ so  _ great, but— but not for Eddie.

Before he can text, though, he gets a message from Richie. When he clicks it open, heart pounding, he reads,  **hey, eds, i’m really sorry about yesterday. wanna come sledding with all of us?**

Eddie feels sick as he opens the picture attached and, sure enough, it’s a picture of all six of them. They look sleep-rumpled, still, but pleased, warm and soft and happy and in love, and Eddie hates them a little bit for it, and hates himself a  _ little  _ bit more for that. The five of them, all the people smiling with Richie in that picture,  _ they  _ get to date the person that Eddie is so  _ stupid  _ fucking in love with. He likes Richie’s partners, but they’re the fucking  _ reason  _ he can’t be  _ with him. _

Eddie texts back,  _ can’t today.  _ He doesn’t elaborate. Richie sends a frowny face back.

This goes on for several days. Eddie’s brain eats away at him a tiny bit more every time Richie texts him, asking if he wants to come hang out with him on some group outing. He Googles what emotion he’s feeling, and UrbanDictionary tells him it’s FOMO, but that doesn’t seem angry or bitter or unreasonable enough to him. He decides he’s significantly worse off than FOMO, because he hates perfectly good people for being happy adjacent to the person he’s in love with but can’t have.

When Richie asks if Eddie wants to go somewhere, Eddie has to say no. Maybe he’ll be ready someday, but not  _ now.  _ Not when he’s  _ just  _ decided that he needs to let Richie go and move on, for all their sakes. He needs  _ time.  _ He can’t get over Richie if he’s constantly watching him be in love with other people. It’s not fair, but then,  _ none  _ of this is fair, and so Eddie keeps declining his invitations with increasingly vague excuses.

Each time he says  _ no,  _ though, he gets angrier about it. At some point, the wires in his brain got crossed, and he thinks that if he spends time with Richie, then everyone will realize how much they don’t like him. But,  _ but,  _ the kicker is, he  _ also  _ thinks that if he  _ doesn’t  _ go, then Richie will immediately forget about him. He can say with reasonable certainty that Richie will start forgetting about him more and more, start thinking about him less and less; he’s stop liking Eddie as much as he does, stop talking to him so much. He’ll realize Eddie can’t compare to his other partners, and so there’s no fucking  _ point  _ to all this, there’s no  _ point,  _ because it’s just endless,  _ hopeless  _ pining, and all it ends up in is Eddie getting hurt. There is no outcome where he’s happy at the end of this.

And yet, he can’t stop being their friend. He can’t stop responding to their concerned messages asking if he’s okay and why he stopped showing up at Richie’s place. He can’t stop letting them meet up with him in the dining hall on their main campus without Richie and make worried noises at him. He can’t stop checking in with them, because they’re his last connection to Richie, until he gets his shit together. As fucked-up and desperate and shitty as Eddie knows that is, he needs this. And,  _ and,  _ they’re his fucking friends, too.

That’s the worst part. He  _ likes  _ the other five of them. He  _ really  _ does. He knows they’re dating the man he’s in love with, and yet he’s still becoming friends with all of them, even though it’s making him fucking miserable. It’s even worse that they never stop fucking talking about Richie. They talk about how great he is, and how romantic he is, and how nice he is to hug, and how warm he is snuggling with him in bed, and— and what a good _ kisser  _ he is, which makes Eddie actually start to  _ cry.  _ Like a teenager, Eddie sits on his bed, reads those texts, and just fucking  _ cries. _

Eddie skips Chem lab on Monday. Richie texts him asking if he’s okay, but he flips his phone over on his desk and ignores the message. Instead, he drops his head onto his pillow, stares up at the ceiling, and just truly evaluates his current situation.

Fact: Richie is the first person that Eddie has ever genuinely wanted to pursue.

Fact: Richie is the first (and only) person that Eddie has ever loved quite like this.

Fact: Eddie is in love with Richie.

Fact: Eddie has never had friends before, not for real.

Fact: Eddie tried to pursue Richie and it didn’t work out.

Fact: Eddie does not  _ fucking understand  _ why the  _ one thing _ he’s ever  _ really  _ wanted is somehow also the  _ one thing  _ he simply  _ can’t  _ have.

It’s when Eddie lists off that last thought that he has his realization. Sitting up, he turns to glance out the window as he thinks,  _ You can’t have him. You have to stop thinking you can. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. _

When Eddie goes to class on Wednesday, he sits by himself. Richie’s already at their table, but Eddie avoids him and sits with a girl whose name he doesn’t know. All he knows is that she always sits alone, and so she probably won’t complain, and he’s right. She doesn’t make a peep. Eddie can feel Richie’s eyes burning into the side of his head, but nobody makes a goddamn  _ sound. _

Richie said once, on one of their study dates, that all of Eddie’s emotions lived in his eyes. He had cupped Eddie’s face in his hand, his palm nestled in his chin, and said, “Your eyes are so big because that’s where you feel everything. You’re just a big ol’ open book, aren’t you, Eds? With eyes like that, how could you not,” and Eddie’s heart had literally stopped for a second before he’d made himself laugh like a normal straight guy would.

Eddie gets lost in thinking about Richie and completely forgets  _ why  _ he was thinking about Richie, until he lifts his head and they accidentally make eye contact again. In a panicked flash, Eddie crams the emotions down, tries to drain them from his face so Richie won’t see them. He’d never shut  _ up  _ about Eddie’s eyes, and now he can’t look away.

Hastily, Eddie shoves his things back into his bag. The lecture part of the lab has only just started, but whatever look is on his face is enough that his professor must just assume he’s sick, because they let him go without a fuss. Eddie shoulders his way out the door of the classroom and heads for the bathroom instead, slamming and locking the stall door behind himself. He hooks his bag on the back of the door before exhaling a trembling breath, shaking himself out.

The bathroom door opens and closes again, and Richie’s voice comes into the bathroom. He’s talking fast and low, and Eddie catches him saying, “I don’t know, he just— He wouldn’t even look at me and he wouldn’t sit with me and then he just fucking— He just  _ bolted.  _ He—” Richie pauses. Eddie’s heart is in his throat; he holds his breath, trying to stay quiet. His stomach turns just listening to this, but he makes himself close his eyes and keep silent.

“No, I know,” Richie says. “That doesn’t— I know.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. Yeah. No, yeah, he— I could. Maybe, I don’t know, it just— I just wish I knew which part of it, you know? Like— No, I don’t think so. Yeah, no. I don’t— Yeah.”

Eddie can feel his heart thudding against his ribcage. He can’t fucking figure out what this shit means, but it makes him feel like dirt, that he’s made Richie feel this way. He was trying to spare him, but all he’s done is make a big fucking mess of everything.

“Yeah, Stan, I’m sorry,” Richie says, and Eddie gets a flash of a memory, Richie kissing Stan in the doorway, Stan on Richie’s couch, Stan in the background of Richie’s selfies, and he inhales sharply. There’s a beat of silence; Eddie claps his hand over his mouth and nose, muffling any and all sound that could come out. In the next beat, Richie starts walking again and says, “Yeah, I’ll go back to class. I’ll be home after six. I love you, too. Bye.”

Eddie hears him hang up, then the bathroom door opens and closes again. He’s left alone, glaring at the inside of a bathroom stall, his hand over his mouth and nose to keep himself quiet. He feels like a goddamn fucking idiot. Worse, he feels jealous as hell,  _ and  _ he feels incredibly shitty  _ because  _ he feels jealous as hell, which is just the fucking cherry on top of the absolute  _ shit  _ sundae that his life has become.

When Eddie unlocks the stall door, the men’s bathroom is empty. He braces himself on the edge of the sink and looks himself in the eye in the mirror. After a pause, he says, “You have to stop being a jackass.”

Watching himself say the words is kind of stupid, but he knows he needs to hear it. Richie had sounded so fucking sad on the phone, and Eddie’s just been ghosting him, giving him the cold shoulder, acting like a  _ dick,  _ when he was giving off a shitload of  _ kiss me  _ vibes and all Richie did was pick up on them. It’s not  _ Richie’s  _ fault that Eddie can’t get over his shit enough to be with Richie the right way.

But he  _ does  _ love Richie, is the problem. Being in love with him is fire, but it’s also starting to spread and warm, to fill Eddie’s whole body at all times. The love he’s feeling for Richie now is so all-encompassing, so— so soft, so giving, so  _ careful,  _ that Eddie wants to protect it. He wants to feed it, feed  _ into  _ it, because it’s the kinder of his emotions. It’s a lot to deal with, combined with the hard, sharp edges of his jealousy, but they’re all tangled up inside him and he needs to act or he’ll explode.

Eddie pulls out his phone and texts,  _ can I come over tonight,  _ and Richie replies in two seconds,  **yes,** and then, after a beat,  **absolutely, what time? do you want to talk now? i can talk now,** and  _ then  _ Eddie hears their lab door open again. He inhales deeply before grabbing his bag from inside the stall and heading out into the hallway to face Richie.

When the two of them make eye contact, Eddie wants literally  _ nothing  _ more than to go right to him, to hold him and be held, to love him and be loved, and he fucking  _ can’t. _

“Can we talk at your place?” Eddie asks. Richie nods, then turns, motioning for Eddie to follow.

They don’t talk, on the walk back to Richie’s apartment. Eddie can tell it’s killing Richie a little bit, but he’s just not ready. If they talk, his thoughts will get all scrambled, and he won’t be able to think straight, and he’ll say the wrong thing and fuck up everything.

Of course, that all goes out the fucking window when they get to Richie’s place and Stan is there, looking surprised to see Eddie as he holds a bottle of wine in his hands.

“I didn’t know you’d be coming over,” Stan says.

“Stan’s day in, I see,” Richie comments, the first thing he’s said in fifteen minutes. His voice slides down Eddie’s throat to his belly and warms him up from the inside out. He’s  _ missed  _ him, so  _ fucking  _ bad.

“This was for you, actually, when you got home,” Stan says. His eyes flick to Eddie, but he doesn’t know Eddie heard their conversation, so Eddie drops his gaze to the hardwood floors beneath them. Richie steps away from Eddie to take the bottle of wine from Stan. “You guys staying in?”

“We’re just going in my room for a little bit,” Richie tells him. He sounds casual, light-hearted, like he always does, but there’s a frisson of tension in his voice. If Eddie notices it, then surely  _ Stan  _ notices it, and Eddie tries not to feel bitter about that but he  _ does,  _ the hard knife’s edge of envy jabbing through the jam-thick haze of his love again.

Richie takes a drink straight from the bottle of wine before passing it over to Eddie. For a moment, Eddie hesitates, because holy  _ fucking  _ god, germs and alcohol he didn’t buy himself and backwash and boys and an endless  _ screaming  _ loop in his head.

He takes the bottle to feel Richie’s hand on his. He takes a sip, and then passes it back, and they lean back against Richie’s pillows together. When Richie takes his next sip and gives the bottle back over, he leans over the edge of his bed. There’s a dragging noise that Eddie identifies as Richie pulling his record player close enough to manhandle, and then the soft sounds of him carefully pulling a record from a sleeve and setting it in the player.

There’s a light scratch when the needle hits the record, and then a staticky pause as the record finds the beginning of the song. Then, though, as Eddie drinks again, the song starts, and it’s clearly Madonna, and Eddie snorts a laugh.

“You’re such a shithead,” Eddie says. Richie steals the bottle back.

“I know,” he agrees. Eddie tips his head back so the crown of it presses into Richie’s headboard. Twice, he thumps it down. “Don’t do that, you’ll smash your skull to smithereens.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Eddie says. He takes the bottle back and drinks before he says, “What a cool little true crime episode for you.”

“Do  _ not  _ use my love of  _ Forensic Files  _ against me,” Richie says, faux-aghast. When they pass the bottle back and forth and back again, they finish it between themselves, each at a half. Richie sets the bottle on his nightstand before he says, “I’m sorry for kissing you.”

“I’m not upset that you kissed me,” Eddie tells him. He feels loose, his tongue is loose, he  _ is  _ loose; he leans into it and rolls up onto his side, facing Richie in bed. Richie turns his head only, his cheek pressing into his hair, spilled like ink dark across his pillowcase.

“Why’re you mad, then?” Richie says. His brow’s furrowed, like this. His forehead looks big at this angle, so Eddie reaches out and runs his fingers through his hair, pulling it forward so it falls into his face instead. Richie huffs, blowing a breath up before he reaches to shove his own hair back. “You dumbass. You don’t even know what you look like right now.”

“What’d I look like?” Eddie asks. Richie smiles, turning fully onto his side so he can reach up and cup Eddie’s face in his hand. He runs the pad of his thumb underneath Eddie’s eye once, then twice.

“You look upset right now,” Richie tells him. “Kind of stupid, to be honest.”

“Stop looking at your reflection in your glasses and look at  _ me,”  _ Eddie says. A smile creeps onto Richie’s face, and so Eddie lets himself smile, too. Just a little bit.

“Why’re you mad, then?” Richie asks again. “If it’s not because I kissed you. Because, to be honest, running away immediately after I kissed you  _ kinda  _ made it seem like it was about that.”

“I’m mad at myself,” Eddie tells him. “I can’t— I can’t be with you the way you want me to. I can’t— I don’t know—”

Richie’s hand draws down, drags over his cheek to his mouth and covers his lips with his fingers. For a moment, he’s serious, and he asks, “Do you want to kiss me right now?”

And Eddie, stupid and wine-drunk and so fucking in love, nods and breathes,  _ “Yes.” _

Richie pulls his hand down and shifts closer, cupping Eddie’s face in his hand and kissing him softly,  _ so  _ softly, like Eddie’s melting butter slipping through his fingers. Eddie pushes in, deepens the kiss by tangling his hand in Richie’s hair and tugging them closer together. Richie separates, then looks him over, his eyes roaming his face before landing on his mouth again. He ducks in for another kiss, and then another, but then Eddie hears a  _ thump  _ in the hall, and he remembers—

He remembers why he can’t, why he  _ can’t  _ have this, why he’s told himself time and time again that he can  _ not  _ have this, and yet here he is again, fucking everything up. Eddie turns, sits up, drops his face into his hands, and genuinely starts to fucking cry. He’d blame it on the wine if this hadn’t happened the other day; as it is, he wants to cover it up so Richie doesn’t see. He wipes frantically at his face before standing.

“I have to go,” Eddie tells him. Richie rolls over on the bed; Eddie can hear the springs creak in the mattress.

“Hey, whoa, what just happened?” Richie asks. He catches Eddie’s hand in his, squeezes it, laces their fingers together. Eddie exhales a shuddering breath. “I thought we were really vibing there, Spaghetti Man. I really like you.”

Eddie shakes his head. “I can’t— This doesn’t have to mean anything, Richie. If you don’t want it to, if, if I don’t—” Eddie takes a deep breath, then says, voice firm, “This doesn’t have to mean anything you don’t want it to.”

He pulls his hand free of Richie’s again, but Richie grabs his wrist. “What does that  _ mean?” _

“I don’t want to complicate things,” Eddie says, a little too loudly. He gets up off the bed and immediately trips over the record player, sending both him and it flying. He knocks his head into the floor and bangs his elbow; Richie’s over him in the next second, and then his bedroom door crashes open and Stan and some girl he doesn’t even recognize are standing over him, too.

“What the fuck happened?” Stan asks.

“You okay, Eds?” Richie asks Eddie directly, ignoring Stan as he puts his hand on Eddie’s head. Eddie jerks away from him, but he groans, his head aching. Richie looks nervously back to Stan before giving Eddie his attention again; he doesn’t try to touch him, but he does sit cross-legged next to him. Eddie scoots himself to sit up, just for an ounce of dignity.

“You have so many other people who love you already,” Eddie says, exhausted. “I don’t understand— I don’t get why you make that face when I say things. I don’t get why you look so sad about me. You don’t  _ need  _ me.”

Richie’s brow furrows and he laughs once, confused, before saying, “Eddie, what the fuck are you talking about? Did you hit your head too hard, because—”

“Should we check his eyes?” the girl says.

“Are you Patty?” Eddie asks, in a moment of clarity. She smiles.

“I think he’s cognitively sound,” Stan says dryly. “Enough to expose me, anyways.”

“What, like I’m too dumb to figure out who’s giggling in there with you?” Richie asks. Eddie wants to laugh, but he can’t, because his head hurts for one reason and his chest hurts for another and he just wants to leave and go home.

He moves to do just that, to sit up and stand and walk out of here, but just shifting reminds everyone he’s there, and then all eyes are on him again.

“What’d you mean by all that, Eds?” Richie asks. “Of course I need you. You’re one of my best friends, of  _ course _ I need you.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Stan says.

“He knows what he’s saying,” Richie argues.

“Don’t be stupid,” Stan replies, and something about that activates Eddie’s fight-or-flight response, and his body instinctively chooses  _ fight. _

He sits up quickly, shoving away the hands that reach out to push him back down as he looks Stan in the eye and says, “You can’t fucking talk to him that way.”

Eddie knows, in the back of his mind, that he’s overreacting. He  _ knows  _ Richie and his partners all joke around with each other, that they snark at each other and say shit to each other that Eddie would only ever say to, well— To Richie, but in the right fucking  _ circumstances,  _ not when Richie’s looking all sad and upset like he is right now, not when Stan gets fucking  _ everything  _ Eddie wants and he  _ still  _ throws it away like that. He  _ still  _ fucking doesn’t know what he has, and Eddie would give  _ anything  _ to be able to have one  _ day  _ with Richie.

He doesn’t know where the rage comes from, but he’s abruptly furious, self-righteous anger flooding his system as he spits, “I would  _ never  _ treat him this way.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” Richie asks. Eddie takes a beat to remember what he said; when he realizes, he’s so mortified, he can’t even speak for a moment. His rage drains from him and becomes an aching embarrassment. He wants to hide under the fucking  _ floorboards.  _ “Eddie, don’t—”

“Please,” Eddie says, pushing away from Richie’s hands. He shoves away from the three of them and goes out Richie’s bedroom door, out his apartment door, out his hallway door, out his building door, and just keeps walking until he gets home.

* * *

Eddie doesn’t see any of them for two weeks.

He spent enough time forging notes from his mother and his doctors in the past to allow him to do things his mother wouldn’t allow — for instance, the aforementioned track team — that he can easily enough make a fake doctor’s note for his Chem lab professor. He says he has a rare eye disease that’ll go away in a few weeks, but he can’t be around chemicals until then, and could he please do his work remotely until he was recovered? And, luckily, his professor gave zero shits and said that was fine.

Those two weeks are the longest fourteen days of Eddie’s  _ life.  _ He spends the entire time working his way up to apologizing to Richie and Stan and— Well, to everybody, actually, because they all deserve apologies for the way Eddie has been acting, which is just— bitter and selfish and jealous and unfair.

Eddie dresses nice, he walks to Richie’s building, and then he promptly spends half an hour pacing around outside before he’s finally ready to go in. He knows all six of them should be in the apartment, because he’s pretty familiar with their schedule from trying to avoid them at all costs. In fact, he’s counting on them all being together so he can apologize and say goodbye all at once.

He knocks on the door. He hasn’t knocked on the door since he first started coming here, but he knocks tonight. Richie’s voice calls, “It’s unlocked,” and so Eddie lets himself in anyways. Like always.

Eddie had guessed right, and all six of them are gathered in Richie’s living room, a movie paused on the television. Eddie shuts the door quietly behind himself before coming around the sofas to see everyone, to look them all in the eyes when he says this.

“I’m really sorry,” he says. “I’m just— I’ve been dealing with some shit, but that’s no excuse to be a jackass to all of you, and I’m sorry for that. I really am.”

The thing is, Eddie hasn’t really had friends like these before. People who care about him, and whom he cares about in return. He doesn’t want to lose them, and so he’ll do something like fucking  _ apologize,  _ he’ll say the words  _ I’m sorry,  _ his most  _ hated  _ words, just to make sure they continue to care for each other. Their happiness matters.  _ They _ matter.

He can’t take that away from them.

“It’s okay,” Stan says first.

“Absolutely,” Bill agrees. Everybody else chimes in except Richie, and the two of them make eye contact. Eddie can feel himself edging towards panic, but Richie just gives him a little smile, in the end.

“Yeah, of course, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says. He pats the cushion beside him and says, “Come take a seat, pop a squat, join me—”

Eddie goes, if only to shut Richie up, but he quickly realizes he can’t be jammed into the sofa with him for too long. It’s exhausting, pretending things are normal when they aren’t, when his body is falling apart inside and his heart is leaking out his mouth and he realizes—

He realizes he can’t do this anymore.

That realization upsets him enough that he shuts down completely, just coasting on a wave of apathy until the movie’s over and he can politely excuse himself. He walks home at an even pace, gets all the way into his bedroom, and then collapses on his mattress.

For a couple of hours, he just cries. He’s not even sure for what: for the loss of his only friends, for the lack of Richie, for the pain of what he’s done and the fact that he’s done it all to himself, for the anger that he can’t just  _ do  _ this, this  _ one thing. _

In the end, he remembers what  _ Star Trek  _ taught him when nobody else was there: the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one. And so, Eddie knows he needs to do what’s best for all of them and stop being friends with them.

Eddie goes to Richie’s apartment again. He drafts multiple texts on the way, hoping he’ll find the right words so he doesn’t have to say this to Richie’s face, but he makes it to his building before he can manage to find those words. He’s not sure they even existed, anyways.

Richie’s outside on the front stoop, smoking a joint, looking like he’s half-asleep. When Eddie’s only a couple of steps away, he lifts his head, then jumps, licking his fingers and putting out the end of his joint before twisting it back up and stuffing it in his pocket.

“I was hoping you’d come back,” Richie says. He doesn’t move to get up, so Eddie sits down on the steps beside him.

“I can’t be friends with you anymore,” Eddie tells him, ripping off the band-aid. He looks down at his hands, even though he can feel Richie staring at him. “I can’t be friends with _ any _ of you anymore. Not just you.”

“What?” Richie asks. “No, seriously,  _ what—  _ What the fuck, Eddie?  _ Why?” _

Eddie sees in his peripheral vision that Richie is reaching out to take his hand, to touch him, and he panics. The second Richie touches his skin, he  _ knows  _ his resolve is going to completely dissolve and he won’t be able to leave. He’ll have to stay, and he can’t stay, because  _ he can’t have this. _

And so, instead, when Richie’s hand gets too close, Eddie flinches backwards, physically recoiling enough to jerk his hand away so they don’t touch. He looks up just in time to catch the hurt on his face as it crumples his features, like Eddie doesn’t  _ want  _ to touch him and that thought is breaking his heart, which— That thought breaks fucking  _ Eddie’s  _ heart, because  _ all he wants  _ is to touch Richie. That’s  _ it.  _ That’s  _ all. _

“I’m so sorry,” Richie says. “I’m so sorry for— For whatever I’ve done to make you so tense and upset and— and angry, and, and— and uncomfortable, I just—”

Richie’s voice is speeding up, panicking, and it sends Eddie’s chest into overdrive, his heart pounding and the backs of his eyes burning and his nose prickling and, the next thing he knows, he’s crying. Richie looks bewildered, which is fair, because Eddie’s never cried in front of him, but it’s even more bewildering for  _ Eddie,  _ who tries not to cry in front of people as a  _ rule. _

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie tells him in a rush. “I’m so sorry, it’s not your fault, it’s  _ my  _ fault, I was just— Richie, I am  _ so  _ fucking jealous, you don’t even understand, just— I can’t be with you when you’re with them, and it just gets worse every fucking day because I’m so in love with you, Richie, I’m  _ in love  _ with you—”

“Wh—”

“And I just— I have this ugly feeling inside of me,” Eddie continues, unable to stop now that he’s started. “It’s just— I’m carrying it around all the time, and it’s getting bigger and bigger, this— this nasty, ugly feeling about everybody you love and everybody who makes you happy, even though they’re my friends, too, now, I— I think, because they make you happy and I want it to be  _ me.”  _ Eddie scrubs the tears away from his face with his hands and chokes out, “Richie, I wish it was  _ me.  _ I want it to be me so badly, Rich, I just— I’m so fucking in love with you and I’m fucking— It  _ hurts.  _ It hurts so bad every fucking day, to just live with this and to just sit with the— the fucking giant knot in my chest, because it’s so fucking horrible not to be with you, Richie, I— I don’t— I—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Richie says. When Eddie looks up at him, though, he’s crying, too. Richie reaches for him again, but Eddie pulls back again just the same.

“I can’t do it,” Eddie tells him tearfully. He doesn’t know what he  _ can’t.  _ He can’t have Richie, he can’t have this conversation, he can’t let Richie  _ in. _

He can’t let him  _ in. _

He’s terrified of letting Richie in any more than he already has. Richie is buried so deeply inside of him, all roots and gnarled branches twining through his organs like they grew up together, like they were born together and they’d die together, somehow, and it’s  _ insane  _ to feel and even more insane to acknowledge to himself, but it’s fucking  _ true.  _ Richie is buried deep in his chest, deep in his heart, and Eddie’s not even sure there can ever be a full or proper version of him without Richie anymore.

Richie brings out his best self, and he is so in love with him. He wants him to be happy, and so he’ll never see him again, just so he can have what he wants. It doesn’t make any sense, that Richie means so much to him; they were literally strangers at the beginning of junior year, and now Eddie feels like he can’t live without Richie, and it’s  _ killing  _ him.

“I have to go,” Eddie says, because there’s nothing else  _ to  _ do but just remove himself from the situation. Richie reaches out to him again, but Eddie turns away, running his hands through his hair. All he has is this stupid ugly feeling inside of him still, and he doesn’t want Richie to touch him like that, he doesn’t want to let Richie touch  _ that,  _ or he’ll  _ know. _

“Why do you have to go, Eddie?” Richie asks. Eddie shakes his head. “Eds, you have to talk to me. Why do you—”

“Because it  _ hurts,”  _ Eddie admits. “I’m sorry, it’s so fucking selfish, but it hurts so bad to be around you— to be around all of you, when— when you’re so happy—” Eddie inhales shakily, but his breath breaks on the exhale.  _ “Fuck,  _ I’m just, I’m—”

He hears another shaky intake of breath, but it’s not his; he looks to the side to see Richie wiping tears off his face hastily with his jacket sleeves.

“What the fuck are  _ you  _ crying for?” Eddie demands tearfully. Richie huffs a wet laugh, shaking his head before he looks down at his hands in his lap.

“Because I’m scared?” Richie says, more like a question than a statement. “Because I’m— I’m just watching you fucking fall apart on my front steps and I have no idea what I’m doing to hurt you so bad, I don’t know—”

Eddie gets up and starts to pace away, but Richie catches him by the wrist again. This time, Eddie doesn’t see it coming, so there’s no time to flinch away or withdraw. Instead, Eddie just covers his face with his free hand and breaks down crying. When Richie realizes he’s not stopping soon, he stands up, too, pulling Eddie’s face into his chest and stroking his hair, rubbing down his back over and over in long, smooth circles. Eddie fists his hands in Richie’s jacket, stands there with him, and just  _ cries. _

“It’s okay,” Richie says softly. Eddie shakes his head, and Richie shushes him. “No, you’re good. I got you. You’re okay.”

Eddie forces himself to take a deep breath, to inhale deeply through the hiccuping sobs and exhale slowly afterwards. Richie turns his face, buries his nose in Eddie’s hair; he doesn’t stop stroking the back of his head.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Eddie says, once he can breathe properly again. He feels like he has to apologize, because this whole fucking mess is his fault and yet somehow Richie’s the one comforting him.

“You didn’t upset me,” Richie replies. He starts to pull back, but Eddie doesn’t let him; he tightens his grip on Richie’s jacket until his knuckles go white. “Alright, we’re staying here. That’s cool. Nobody wants to get into this building anyways, it sucks.”

Eddie laughs once, then sniffs. His face is burning. He has no idea what to say, and so, for a long while, he says nothing at all. Richie doesn’t push him; he just keeps rubbing his back and waiting. Eddie knows he should just confess to everything, but it’s so fucking stupid and embarrassing, and the worst part is, once he says it, that’s it. He can’t take it back, or convince Richie it doesn’t mean anything. It’ll all be out there, Richie will know everything, and there’s no going back. They won’t be friends anymore and Eddie will go back to being alone and it’s going to be horrible, but if that’s the difference between Richie being sad or happy, Eddie knows the choice he’d make every time.

Eddie inhales, then stops. He doesn’t know how to start saying everything he wants to say. Richie does pull back, then, framing Eddie’s face in his hands before he says, “Tell me how to fix it. I’ll do anything.”

Bewildered, Eddie furrows his brow. “Wh— There’s nothing to fix. Well, there’s— There’s nothing for  _ you  _ to fix. This is  _ my _ fault.”

_ “What  _ is your fault, Eddie?” Richie asks.

Eddie’s had two weeks to figure out what he thinks and what he feels and what he wants without anybody around. He knows that he can’t be with them anymore, and he knows this is the point of no return, and so he knows, too, that he has to just— just cut his losses. Richie needs to fully understand, Eddie needs to tell him  _ everything,  _ because then he won’t be sad anymore, he’ll get why he can’t hang out with Eddie, and that’ll be that.

“It’s because I was jealous,” Eddie says. He shakes his head, then backs away from Richie, dragging his hands down his face. “No, I  _ am  _ jealous, I am still  _ currently  _ jealous, because— because every time I see them with you, I just— I want it so  _ badly,  _ Richie. I want to be with you like they are so badly and I’m so stupid fucking  _ jealous  _ of everything you guys have with each other, like I’m some stupid teenager who—  _ Fuck,”  _ Eddie spits, then presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I want what you have and I can’t have it— I will  _ never  _ get to have it, because I don’t want to be with  _ them,  _ I only want to be with  _ you,  _ and I’ve spent so much time trying to make it work and I can’t and I’m so  _ sorry,  _ Richie.”

When Eddie’s speech stops, he’s met with silence. When it stretches on too long and his heart starts to pound, Eddie lowers his hands a few inches so he can look at Richie properly. Richie looks— absolutely bewildered, actually.

“I don’t— Are you telling me you don’t like that I have  _ friends?”  _ Richie asks incredulously. Eddie frowns. “Because I d—”

Eddie drops his hands down to his sides and leans in to say,  _ “Friends  _ is a funny thing to call people you’re  _ dating,  _ Richie.”

Richie’s eyebrows draw together as he stares down at Eddie like he’s grown two heads. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. After a beat, he asks, voice wavering, “People I’m  _ what?” _

Eddie stares up at him, feeling the backs of his eyes start to prickle again. Richie just stares right into his eyes, and Eddie remembers all that shit Richie’s always saying about reading his emotions in his eyes, so he tries desperately to make sure Richie knows he loves him and he’s sorry and he’s fucking  _ confused,  _ he’s so fucking sad and, and—

“Eds,” Richie says, interrupting his inner meltdown. He cocks his head at Eddie, studying him, and then continues, slowly, “Based on what you just said, I think you’re telling me that you can’t be with me because I am… dating — yeah, dating you said dating — my five best friends. Is that a correct hypothesis, lab partner?”

Eddie feels cold with how fast the blood drains from his face, but he’s so fucking embarrassed in the next beat of his heart that he floods with heat. He can feel his own face scrunching up, annoyed, aggravated that Richie won’t understand  _ why  _ this is a problem. Eddie takes another step backwards before he says, “Are you being obtuse on  _ purpose?” _

For some godforsaken reason, Richie is  _ smiling  _ at Eddie, all soft and fond, when he replies, “No, I am  _ genuinely  _ asking you that question, because I really don’t know if that’s actually what’s going through your head right now and that you actually think that’s what going on here, or if you’re just fucking with me and this is some kind of crazy excuse, because if it’s that, I’d rather have the truth, because that’s just— That’s  _ insane,  _ Eds.”

Eddie feels the back of his nose start to burn as he laughs bitterly, looking back over his shoulder. When there’s nobody there, he turns to Richie again, fighting back the urge to cry again. He says,  _ “Yes,  _ you’re dating your five best friends, and I know, I  _ know  _ it sounds great in theory, and— And I’m sure it even  _ is  _ great, for you, because you’re clearly so happy with them, but it’s just— It’s not for me, and when I— When I’m around all of you, I’m just— I’m so miserable, it— I can’t keep being friends with you all, especially not after we kissed that one time and I just— I didn’t want to turn it into a whole— a whole stupid  _ thing,  _ because I’m just so  _ stupid _ fucking in love with you but I’m really just— I’m also really jealous and I get so bitter and so mean and I know I’m— I’m not built for anything other than monogamy, because I’m just, I’m just so— What?”

Richie’s bewildered expression breaks, his whole face opening up into shock. Eddie feels his heart rate pick up, racing dangerously fast, his hands starting to sweat and go numb.

“Richie,  _ what  _ are you—” Eddie starts to demand, but then Richie cuts him off with a laugh. Eddie’s hackles immediately go up, and he spits, “If you’re going to fucking laugh at me, you can just fucking shut—”

“No, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Richie hurries to say. He stops laughing, but he’s still smiling, so wide it could break his face. Without hesitation, he steps closer, cupping Eddie’s face in his hands again. His bright blue eyes flick over his face before settling on his eyes again when he asks, still grinning, “So, you don’t want to date me because I’m dating five other people, or you don’t want to date me because you think that if you  _ did  _ date me while I was dating five other people, you wouldn’t be able to compete with them?”

The fact that Richie’s fucking  _ laughing  _ at him over the thing that he’s been agonizing over for  _ weeks  _ makes Eddie abruptly fucking  _ furious.  _ He pushes away from Richie, feeling like his chest is about to explode when he snaps, “Honestly, you know what, Richie, just— Just,  _ fuck you,  _ I am fucking— I am fucking taking that back, I’m— I can’t— Just—” Eddie makes a noise halfway between a shriek and a groan. “Just go back to your four fucking boyfriends and your hot fucking girlfriend, I don’t need you fucking  _ laughing at me  _ for having fucking  _ feelings—” _

Richie stops laughing immediately, his face falling as he says, “No, I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you for that—”

“Fuck you, Richie,” Eddie cuts him off.

“Eddie, baby,  _ no—” _

_ “Don’t  _ call me that,” Eddie snaps, but his voice breaks halfway through. He shakes his head, then looks away again, staring hard at a tree in the distance until it goes blurry in his vision.

“Hey,” Richie says. Eddie doesn’t turn his head. “Eds, I’m— I have to say, first of all, flattered. I’m  _ very  _ flattered, dude. Mostly because you’re in love with me, but also because you seem to think that  _ I  _ am somehow capable of successfully dating a total of  _ five people  _ who are  _ completely  _ out of my league.” Eddie frowns and starts to open his mouth to argue, but Richie just keeps going, says, “You look— Actually, right now, you look  _ super  _ mad and confused, but I know it’s just because all the gears are turning in that smart head of yours, so I’m just going to say, in plain English, and in the interest of full disclosure: Eddie, I am  _ not  _ dating my five best friends. I don’t even know what possessed you to even  _ consider  _ that.”

“The  _ first time  _ I came over here, Bev opened the door in nothing but  _ your  _ shirt and called you  _ babe,”  _ Eddie reminds him. Richie furrows his brow, then laughs again.

“She’d come over the night before to shoot the shit because Ben still hadn’t made a move yet,” Richie tells him. “She’d come over to just complain about him being stupid fucking obvious and we smoked a couple bowls and she got too dumb to walk back across campus so I let her crash with me. I don’t own, like— actual pajamas, I just let her use my shirt.”

Eddie frowns and says, “But— Ben and Bill—”

“Ben’s the only one who doesn’t shove me off of him immediately when I try to hug him or sit on his lap,” Richie interrupts to explain. “He lets me just hang out on him so I take full advantage of that. And, Bill—” Richie thinks for a moment, then smiles and says,  _ “Fuck,  _ I wanted him to stay to meet you so he could be my wingman and suggest we go do something together.”

Eddie’s heart slows down, then picks up again, racing for a different reason. His palms are slick as the pieces all start sliding together, but he still has to ask, “What— What about Mike? I saw him in your room putting your clothes on from your dresser.”

“Yeah, he texted me that you saw that,” Richie says. “He’d been on his way to a group study session but he stopped to eat dinner with me at Bailey’s Pizza down the road before my shift and he spilled soda all over himself, so I let him go back to my place and wear something of mine, since we were so close by.”

Eddie covers his face with his hands before miserably asking, “What about when you kissed Stan?”

“I always kiss Stan,” Richie says, without hesitation. “I  _ like  _ to kiss my homies goodnight as a ritual. Well— I mean, really, it’s only Stan, but  _ everyone  _ kisses Stan, even  _ Ben  _ kisses Stan, that’s just— It’s  _ Stan—” _

“Yeah, that—” Eddie says, then sighs, frustrated. “That sounds like you’re literally just saying things, Richie, who the fuck— All of the evidence points to you dating all of them, I don’t—”

Richie groans, throwing his hands up in the air. He exclaims, “I have  _ never  _ dated  _ any  _ of my friends, I  _ promise  _ you that. If you want to be the first friend I date, then I am literally  _ begging  _ you to  _ please  _ be my guest, Eds, because if I was dating  _ you,  _ I’d be dating to marry my best friend.”

Eddie’s entire brain shuts down, goes completely offline; he can barely even  _ think.  _ All the blood rushes into his face, and he’s almost disoriented by it. Richie saying things so fucking plainly makes Eddie feel stupid as  _ shit,  _ but also—  _ Also. _

“Oh, you like that?” Richie says, grinning. “You wanna get married, Eds? You want some homie matrimony—”

“Literally shut the  _ fuck  _ up,” Eddie spits, his voice breaking again. “Don’t you  _ dare  _ say that you want to marry me.”

Richie laughs again and says, “Eds, baby, I don’t think I need to remind you that I just held you while you freaked out on my front steps and I kind of just— fucking  _ let you do it,  _ after two  _ weeks  _ of not seeing you and thinking that I’d ruined everything, and I— I didn’t even want to get out of  _ bed  _ for the last fucking week, because I thought I’d fucked everything up. But I just— I drag myself down here to tell you everything, and you tell me that all this happened because  _ you  _ thought that  _ I —  _ I,  _ Richie Tozier,  _ I think we’ve met — was _ dating _ my  _ five best friends.  _ Did I get it all? Is that right—”

The tears spill over again and Eddie feels like a fucking  _ baby  _ as he bites off, “You’re making me sound like such a fucking  _ asshole,  _ Rich. You do  _ not  _ want to fucking date me.”

_ “Marry  _ you,” Richie corrects. He grins again, rubbing at one eye with the back of his hand. He inhales shakily, then says, “Fuck,” and tears start falling down his face again, too. “Eddie, the  _ second  _ you told Jake Copeland at table three to fuck off the first day in lab when he tried to correct your formula, I knew there was only  _ one  _ friend I wanted to spend the literal rest of my stupid fucking life with.” Richie steps closer again, takes Eddie’s hands between his, and quietly says, “I mean that, Eds. I really do.”

Eddie’s brain starts to log back on, his chest feeling light and hope starting to bleed desperately into his heart. His hands are tingling and his heart is fucking  _ pounding,  _ flames racing through his veins, as he says, somewhat hysterical, “I should’ve never fucking said anything. I shouldn’t have even come over here, actually, you know what— I should’ve just cut my fucking losses  _ months  _ ago, found some other tall, goofy-looking guy in another Chem lab to cry over—”

Richie interrupts him with a laugh to say, “Spaghetti, there’s only one man for you, and that man is  _ me.”  _ He pulls Eddie’s hands close to his heart, over the thin fabric of his jacket. “And there’s only  _ one man  _ for  _ me,  _ and that man is  _ you. You,  _ Eddie Kaspbrak. I  _ promise  _ you that.” Richie looks down, pulls Eddie’s hands up to his mouth, and kisses the backs of his fingers. His warm breath spreads over Eddie’s hands as he says, “I won’t say I want to marry you right now if you don’t want to. Also because I still have to see how you react to me telling absolutely  _ everybody,  _ the other guys  _ included,  _ that  _ you  _ somehow thought that  _ I  _ could bag  _ all of them  _ when they can barely bag  _ each other.” _

Eddie scowls at him, angry and mortified and so fucking happy his skin could split apart and he wouldn’t even care. Richie kisses Eddie’s hands again, so Eddie pulls one hand free to shove at Richie’s shoulder. He doesn’t let go, though, once his hand is there; instead, he grips the material of his jacket, then slides his hand up to the collar of his shirt underneath. He tightens his hold there and draws Richie closer to kiss him again, for the first time.

Richie tips his head to the side, the tip of his nose running along Eddie’s cheek before he deepens the kiss. He releases Eddie’s other hand to cup his face, pulling him in closer and closer. After a beat, his hands slip down to hold Eddie’s hips instead. Eddie takes the opportunity to pull back; Richie just drops his forehead down to Eddie’s, his chest heaving as he catches his breath.

“If you say a word about this to  _ anyone,”  _ Eddie says softly, boiling with heat and embarrassment and lust and love, “I will fucking  _ murder  _ you.”

Richie huffs a laugh, his eyes shutting for a moment as he breathes,  _ “Fuck,  _ I’m in love with you.”

Eddie realizes Richie hadn’t actually said it yet, that this is the first time he’s heard those words come out of Richie’s mouth, and he has to kiss him again. More than he needs  _ air,  _ he needs to kiss Richie again.

“I want to go back to your place,” Richie says.

“Why don’t we just go upstairs?” Eddie asks, gently tugging Richie down again with fistfuls of his hair. Richie lets him, for a minute, before he lifts his head again.

“Because the guys are upstairs,” Richie says, and Eddie groans. Richie grins when he says, “Yeah, I figured you’d rather be more alone than that right now.”

“Fine, we’ll go back to my place,” Eddie agrees. Richie kisses him again, then once more, before he pulls back again and grabs Eddie by the hand to drag him back to his place. Eddie’s heart’s still racing, but he feels like he could take on the fucking  _ world  _ and come out on top. He’s still mildly confused, highly distressed, and now exceedingly emotional and horny, but he’s not sure he’s ever been fucking happier.

“What’re you grinning at?” Richie asks. When Eddie glances up at him as they walk, he’s smiling, too.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten something I wanted before,” Eddie says. Richie makes a sad noise and pulls him in, kissing him on the top of his head and releasing his hand to loop his arm around Eddie’s shoulders instead. “I want you so much, Richie.”

“You’ve got me, Eds,” Richie tells him. Eddie comes to a stop on the sidewalk, and Richie halts, too, jolted by Eddie’s standstill.

“I love you,” Eddie says again. Richie grins and kisses him again, and again, and  _ again,  _ before Eddie makes them keep walking.

* * *

The next morning, Richie drags Eddie, complaining the entire time, out of bed at nine in the morning to go back to his apartment. He keeps promising that there’s going to be a surprise, that the guys have something for them. Eddie’s not sure what surprise is worth it to make him leave his bed when Richie’s in it.

Richie has to unlock his front door when they get there, because nobody but him is foolish enough to leave it unlocked and open at all times. As soon as they’re in, though, the  _ first thing  _ Eddie lays eyes on is the huge banner strung up across Richie’s living room that says  _ CONGRATS ON THE FRIENDSHIP  _ in glittery puff paint.

The banner is decorated around the border with signatures, messages, and well-wishes from Stan, Ben, Bev, Bill, and Mike. Eddie jumps to tear it down, but he can’t actually reach it. He turns to Richie and points up at it in frustration.

“Take it down,” Eddie demands. Richie laughs, coming close enough to drop his arm across Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie shoves at his shoulder, then turns his head and tips his chin up so Richie will get the hint. Luckily, he does, dropping his head down to kiss him softly. Eddie lets him do that for a moment before he yanks him in for a deeper kiss; Richie just smiles into it and turns fully, tugging him into his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> You can (and should!) come chat with me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicolelianesolo) and/or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](https://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
